Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

CHRISTMAS DAY IN MINNESOTA

The road hits the hilltop.
Shingled boxes people ought to occupy
Pepper the lower plains.

Snow blankets distinctions.
The cold is such
That skin freezes to metal it’s touched.

The field lies hard beside the lost lane,
Old Chevy and tractor adrift
On the lifeless terrain.

Trudging on: first the barn,
Then the outhouse-turned-sauna
And last the house of the farm.

A wood frame plus lean-to shed—
Rural life at the creek bend,
Where the exterior walls bled

Rot, webs and a woodchuck.
In mounds of frosted mud,
The pickup, stuck.

No insulation back then.
Wood slats bare to the wind
Were white once.

Ugly of course,
A green fridge unplugged
On the dirt floor of a glass-hemmed porch.

Mismatched carpet ends
Stumble up the stairs.
Ball jars line the cellar shelves.

In the back room a clothes pole,
A Marine uniform,
A bedroll.

The guest bedroom a forbidding black,
Mennonite handouts in the closet,
A nest for rats.

The sect smells musty and thin.
Frigid acts made the bed
An alcove coffin.

In the living room a workbench,
A sewing basket,
A spark-plug wrench.

Over the stuffed couch’s stain
A forget-me-not pillow
In an awkward stitch

Of pain.
Above the woodstove a ceiling grate
Where bread batter rises and words evaporate.

Near the oven, the linoleum—scorched—
Sinks over a basement cistern,
Cracks and warps.

The dank rainwater pit
Rings out hollow
Under his footsteps.

In the dark, coyotes scream.
The silenced off-key piano
Boogies the theme:

Roger kicked the stove from under his weight.
With his neck through a tow rope,
He swung from the grate.

Vulpellach, December 1979